Olympia's Bike Corridor Pilot Project

Please note that the portion between Sylvester Park and Cherry Street will be delayed until the new apartment building on Adams and 7th is finished later this year. The rest of the pilot Bike Corridor is now ready to use!

What Changed?

We installed special signs and pavement markings along the route. In addition, we changed the following three intersections to make them easier to cross.

When the west leg of the intersection has been built, the City will add a marked crosswalk for pedestrians across Jefferson.

This first Bike Corridor is a pilot project, so many of the changes will be interim, or built with less permanent materials. Later, we can make the changes permanent if they work well.

Future Bike Corridor Routes

These candidate routes below (click to enlarge) will likely be the starting point for choosing the next Bike Corridor to build. Please let us know if you have an idea not shown on this map – we want to know what you think.

Tell Us What You Think

Now that the pilot project is built, we will want to hear from you about:

Frequently Asked Questions

Bike Corridors are on small, quiet streets that do not have much car traffic. Since there are fewer cars, it is easier for people biking and driving to share the same lane. These are different from bike lanes, which we put on busy streets.

Bike Corridors should be more comfortable for a wide range of people who want to bike. As the City builds more of them, more people will have a chance to ride bikes to get places.

Staff worked with the BPAC to identify candidate routes for a pilot Bike Corridor during 2014 and 2015. Staff also researched Bike Corridors in other cities and studied engineering and design guidance about Bike Corridors, which are called bike boulevards and neighborhood greenways in other cities.

The City Council specified that the Bike Corridor pilot project should come into downtown. This route connects Sylvester Park downtown to Lions Park in the eastside neighborhood. In the downtown, it will be within 2 blocks of the post office, library and City Hall. In the eastside neighborhood, the corridor will also be within one block of Madison Elementary School, Avanti High School, and one block from Ralph's Thriftway.

7th Avenue is the only east/west street downtown that meets the design criteria for a Bike Corridor. Those criteria state that a Bike Corridor must have fewer than 3,000 vehicles per day and actual travel speeds slower than 25 mph.

We heard a lot of interest in Olympia Avenue. The crossing of East Bay Drive can be difficult for people on bikes, and the volumes and truck traffic on Olympia make this a difficult route to pursue as a Bike Corridor with today's conditions.

We identified Washington as the best route to the Farmers Market from the downtown core. However, because of bus traffic and the number of turning vehicles, we decided that this was not a good street for the first Bike Corridor. Washington can be pursued as a Bike Corridor in the future as we build more routes.

City Calendar

City Updates

Beginning Friday, December 14, receipts and notifications for online utility billing customers will be sent from OlympiaUtilityBilling@Paymentus.com. Please add this email address to your contacts to ensure messages are received in your inbox.

APPLY NOW! CITIZEN ADVISORY COMMITTEES

We are looking for citizens interested in serving on City advisory boards, commissions and committees. Applications due by 5 p.m. on Thursday, January 31. More...

STATE AVE BANNER SPACE

We are now accepting 2019 reservations for our banner display space on State Avenue. More...